Our journey ended last night. Our S told us at dinner (really out of the blue) that he had decided on a college. Deposit has been made. Emails sent. Release emails sent and SWAG ordered. Smiling faces. Relief.
Programs Applied: Ball State, Baldwin Wallace, BoCo, Carnegie Mellon, CCM, Coastal Carolina, Florida State, Montclair State, Otterbein, Pace, Point Park, Rhode Island, Rider, Sam Houston, Shenandoah, Southern Utah, Texas State, U of Arts, U of Arizona, U of Central Oklahoma, U of Utah, Viterbo, Wright State.
Prescreens Passed: BoCo (Video), Carnegie Mellon (video), CCM (Live), Coastal Carolina (Live), Florida State (Live), Otterbein, Pace (Live). The rest of the schools that required PreScreens were waived because he was as College Audition Coach student. Very nice benefit.
Prescreens Rejected: Texas State
Accepted: Ball State, BoCo, Montclair State, Otterbein, Rhode Island, Rider, Sam Houston, Southern Utah, U of Arts, U of Arizona, U of Central Oklahoma, U of Utah, Viterbo, Wright State
Waitlisted: CCM
Withdrawn: Florida State……he just didn’t make a connection in the room. In his words: “Dad….I just wasn’t feeling it”…….okay then!
Rejected: Baldwin Wallace, Carnegie Mellon (this one stung, despite knowing the odds) , Coastal Carolina, Pace, Point Park, Shenandoah
Coach: Mary Anna Dennard, College Audition Coach……I can’t recommend her enough!
Summer Programs: Workbooked Newsies Jr. in New York for Disney/MTI/iTheatrics. Performed in some shows during the summer and wrote music. We did go to master classes/mock auditions at Carnegie Mellon, Point Part and Baldwin Wallace before audition season.
Background:
He was in competitive gymnastics (competing for national titles) until the 6th grade. He played club soccer, football and baseball. An injury in gymnastics lead to a year off in which he tried a summer musical theatre camp for a week. He fell in love with performing. That led to auditioning for a musical with the local youth theatre group. A year later he was performing in a musical with a college in the area. He never went back to sports and I became a theatre dad. He couldn’t be happier……I am still on the fence, LOL.
As a freshman he pushed us to enroll him into a performing arts high school instead of a traditional high school, which we agreed. It allowed him to do what he loved multiple times a day and we don’t regret the decision.
Leading up to the audition season he had taken 4 years of private vocal lessons, 6 years of dance, 4 years of tap, 1 year of private ballet and 3 years of acting.
When we started looking into college programs we came up with a list of 5 schools. We had not been aware how competitive this whole process was. Once we did we took it up to 9 schools. I found the CC boards and down the rabbit hole I went. I found the word Moonifieds. I googled Moonfieds and that changed everything. I don’t think he would have been able to navigate this as easily without the help and guidance from Mary Anna Dennard (College Audition Coach) and her staff. From my son’s perspective he got top notch coaching, songs and monologues selected for him and an abundance of resources. From my side it was purely economic. After he blew up the schools he was applying to because of the odds laid out in front of us I used the logic that we would only have to travel twice for auditions: One time for Moonifieds (17 auditions/live pre screens) and a second trip for Chicago Unifieds (7 auditions). The (2) safety schools didn’t require auditions and (1) accepted video auditions. The savings in the extra travel if we had not done Moonifieds more than covered in what I paid for superb coaching. It was a win/win.
My son is also a musician and composer and has his songs on all the major streaming services and iTunes. He plays piano, guitar, drums and most brass instruments. For the past 3 years he has been writing and recording his own music. He was even called out a few times during auditions on this skill (yes, they read those resumes) and was able to perform his own music during his auditions and played some original compositions on piano as well. His goal during all of auditions was to stay in the room as long as possible. Some of his auditions went 20-30 minutes longer once they engaged him about his music. He feels it made an impact in the room……who knows?
From Moonified auditions heard from Rider, Baldwin Wallace, Viterbo, Wright State and U of the Arts all before Christmas. It was a HUGE weight off his back. To quote him “I can relax now……I am going to college”.
After Chicago Unified results my S had narrowed down his choices to 5 schools. He had done a really good job of not falling in love with a single school and literally did just enough research to figure out what programs he wanted to apply. We had everything in place to make our visits during his spring break a week before the COVID-19 crisis hit the US. All of his selected colleges went dark. Our plans went out the window. He spent time reaching out to faculty to get his questions answered. He became very experienced with Zoom. YouTube was great to get tours and student perspectives. Facebook helped him get in touch with current students that answered questions and took him around campus via FaceTime.
All of the colleges were more than willing to advocate on his behalf to get him some more scholarship money. He knew what our budget was and that he didn’t want to be saddled with loans once finished with school. In the end it came down to BoCo, Otterbein and University of Arizona. He really struggled between the 3, as they are all very different and all AMAZING programs. The tipping point was a 2.5 hour zoom video call with current students where he just clicked. He knew he wanted to a part of their tribe. He ended up with going with his gut.
Final Decision: Otterbein University
Go Cardinals!
